Abstract/Summary

How true is the statement: “The camera never lies”? Trick photography has a long and varied history, and good fakes are extremely difficult to refute. Now computer software makes it possible to move beyond the ‘grab image’ function to assist biological illustration in line drawing and/or extensive manipulation of a photographic original. The computer, like the camera, is an imaging tool, which still requires careful use and observation of the original specimen. Image manipulation software can inadvertently distort reality with the possibility of editing a ‘new species’. Thus the temptation to use image manipulation to show a clean specimen should perhaps be avoided. Editors of journals dealing with taxonomic and anatomical manuscripts should, with the referees, be given the ‘original’ and ‘manipulated’ images to determine, “Is it real?”